The Avengers Prank War: Cleanup
by RawraTheDragon
Summary: Maria deals with the aftermath of the prank war.


Maria Hill, Assistant Director of S.H.E.I.L.D, was sitting in her office beneath mounds of incident report forms which had flooded in after the official end to the Prank War that had began two weeks ago, according to her sources.

It had begun with a few minor pranks (the disappearance of Agent Coulson's stapler, the pens from Agent Sitwell's office disappearing - they turned up in Phil's desk drawer - and all of Dr. Banner's whiteboard markers being replaced with permanent markers). The official start was recognised with the disappearance of Darcy Lewis' iPod (Agent Coulson denied any knowledge of the incident), at which she had retaliated by changing the locks on his filing cabinet and giving the keys to Clint Barton to hide in the air ducts. Phil used the opportunity to hand off all his paperwork to Agent Sitwell.

Once Tony got involved, it seemed that the prank war escalated rather quickly. Tony's involvement began when all of his good, life-giving coffee was replaced with decaffeinated coffee. Pepper had found Tony crying on the floor of the kitchen at 2am, sobbing into a mug of it. Pepper said that, from the calculations Tony had run, it was an over 80% chance that the coffee thief was Clint, and so, Tony gifted Natasha with a bottle of good vodka in exchange for dumping glitter all through Clint's nest in the air ducts. It was then, technically, Tony's fault that the glitter found it's way into Bruce's lab and ruined his sandwich, which had been hand made by Steve. Bruce's revenge involved a very happy Dummy, a can of bright pink paint and the walls of Tony's lab.

Maria sighed - a long, weary sigh which the other agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. had become well accustomed to over the past two weeks - and briefly entertained the thought of quitting her job and moving to somewhere far away. However, she realised that Fury would skin her before she could even mention quitting.

At least there had been no villain-related mischief in the two weeks that S.H.E.I.L.D. Headquarters and the Avengers' Tower - as well as anyone in either location - was sufficiently occupied with internal mischief. Maria comforted herself with the reminder that villain-related incident reports were much worse that the reports she had. She also thought about how comforting it would be to stab Tony Stark in the eye with a pen, but decided that, no matter how much Director Fury would love her for doing so, the thought of a court appearance wasn't worth the comfort. She sighed again, putting aside another completed form.

The event, after which everyone agreed to end the prank war, had been a fairly innocuous idea for a prank, as it was only replacing Dr. Banner's usual tea with a similar variety that had strawberries, but it had caused a panic attack from the good doctor after he had shared the replaced tea with an upset Pepper Potts, whose allergic reaction to the strawberries had her being rushed to medical. While both Bruce and Tony were by her bedside in medical and apologising frantically - Tony for upsetting her and Bruce for unknowingly setting off her allergies - she had made them promise to end the prank war. For that, Maria was grateful, and she had told Pepper so while they were out on their lunch date, and Pepper had laughed.

Pulling her thoughts from her latest date with the redhead, Maria returned to her paperwork, or rather, she stalked out of her office to hassle Phil about her paperwork. She knew he had no paperwork to complete and no meetings to attend either, so throwing herself into the spare chair in his office and ranting at him for half an hour was going to be a welcomed distraction for him, if he wasn't busy doing whatever he and Clint did together. After a pause outside Agent Coulson's office door to make sure he was present and alone, she pushed open the door and proceeded to throw herself into his spare chair, a move that, if witnessed by anyone other than Phil, Pepper, Natasha and maybe Fury, would have seemed rather un-Agent Hill behaviour. Phil looked up from his computer and greeted her.

"Maria."

"Phil." There was a pause,

"How's Pepper?" he asked. She groaned,

"Busy, unfortunately," she replied, glancing at the clock on the wall, "She's in a meeting with the board right about now."

"Then you've either come about Clint, or you're avoiding the overwhelming mound of incident reports on you desk," he said, "It's the latter, I believe."

"Can you please just give this to someone else?" she asked, "Sitwell maybe? I know he's doing nothing right now." Phil shook his head,

"We need an uninvolved agent to fill in the forms. You're the only one with clearance."

"If I have to write up one more report, I'm going to go stab Stark in the eye with a pen," she threatened. Phil laughed,

"No need," he said, "Pepper had JARVIS lock him out of his lab for the day and yelled at him for a good hour this morning." Maria smiled,

"Remind me why we didn't hire Pepper?" Maria asked,

"I offered, but she said no," Phil replied,

"Pity," Maria said, "Natasha said she'd make a great agent."


End file.
